Did you ever see an old man in a lawn chair, sitting out in front of his house in the afternoon watching the road? Did you ever wonder what he could be doing, how he could spend hours alone, seemingly staring at nothing? Did you always assume―even though you couldn’t see it―that he had a beer in his lap, and more at the ready? I used to have a neighbor like that, up the hill behind my house in Monkton. I liked to see him as the Vermont country version of Clint Eastwood’s character in Gran Torino, sitting alone with a can and a cooler, gazing out over the valley, passing the time in the shade of a striking old maple.

In the late afternoon before dinner, the guy sitting in the chair at the end of the driveway, that guy was me. I didn’t have a cooler of beer to occupy my time, didn’t wave at the cars (because I really can’t muster a passable wave) as they drove home from work, but couldn’t find anything I’d rather be doing at the time. Finding the smallest of pleasures from something so simple, and objectively boring―even as runners and bikers passed by and my heart ached a little―shows just how much my life is different from yours.